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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, well, unfortunately, it is a sad day. Today marks 2 years since Hamas's horrific, brutal, terrorist attack on Israel--a day of inextinguishable grief, the single deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. No matter how much time passes, I will always remember October 7 as if it were yesterday.

On October 7, I was in Beijing, leading a bipartisan delegation in China, meeting with President Xi about opening up Chinese markets to U.S. companies, when I first learned of the attack. I will never forget the story. The Israeli Ambassador to China came and told me what happened in Israel and talked about what happened at the Kibbutz Be'eri, where Hamas gathered children, grandparents, mothers, and babies into one community center and gunned them all down.

It reminded me of the story of my grandmother in Chortkiv, in western Ukraine, in 1941, when the Nazis came to her home and asked her to gather her greater family on the porch. About 35 people gathered, from ages 80 to 3 months.

The Nazis said: You are coming with us.

She said: We are not moving.

They gunned them all down--machine-gunned them all down. So the story of Be'eri was eerily reminiscent.

After hearing of the attack, I cut my trip to China short, as important as it was, and got on a plane to Israel as soon as I could. I told the Israeli people, during these troubled times, that the American people were with them.

What I saw in Israel, in the aftermath of the attack, shook me to my core. I met with families whose loved ones were killed, injured, and a woman telling us she was waving good-bye to her son, 12 years old, who was kidnapped and on a motorcycle with a Hamas thug. I will never forget those meetings. There wasn't a dry eye in the house.

The world must never--never--forget the horrors that Hamas inflicted on them that day. The brutality and viciousness of Hamas's attacks-- indiscriminate violence against innocent infants, young people at a concert, women, the elderly; sexual violence--taking hundreds of hostages, will remain ever present in my mind and in the minds of the conscience of the world.

Today, we remember the victims of the October 7 attacks--may their memories be a blessing--and we reaffirm our commitment to finally bring home all the hostages still held so cruelly by Hamas, vicious organization that it is.

Two years later, 48 hostages remain in Hamas's captivity, including the remains of two New Yorkers, Omer Neutra and Itay Chen. Every day that these hostages remain in captivity, every day their families are denied full closure and burial of their loved ones is a day too long. We remain committed to bringing the hostages home as soon as possible.

At this crucial moment in negotiations, the Trump administration and all those at the table and the international community must do everything--everything--to finally secure a cease-fire and hostage agreement to end the war in Gaza and to bring the hostages held by Hamas home, and to surge desperately needed humanitarian relief to innocent Palestinians facing heartbreaking levels of hunger and devastation in Gaza, and, finally, to build an enduring and lasting peace.

It is imperative that all parties involved do everything possible to secure this desperately needed agreement.

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